Our Favorite 2011 Covers & The Stories Behind Them

Out of all the people that I got to hang out with in 2011, Nick Trapasso was by far the sickest. He taught me how to chill and not sweat anything. I don’t think that dude worries or stresses about anything, and if he does, he definitely doesn’t show it. I never really learn too much from skaters, I always thought they were f—king idiots. Even though people think he’s a stoner and a pile and lazy, he knows what to do and he knows he doesn’t need to do a bunch of garbage. He’d rather not film if it’s going to be garbage. I learned to chill and have more quality over quantity.

I thought he looked amazing in the photo. He’s got his sunglasses on and he’s just chillin’ on a summer afternoon in Los Angeles back Smithing this fence. He didn’t even care to take his glasses off. I forget which trick he was originally trying but I suggested the back Smith, I thought it would look sick from behind the fence. TransWorld made it a cover for a Pro Spotlight, I guess this was the most eye-catching photo. Then Ed Templeton did the collabo, you know? What’s funny about this is that my very first cover of Strength magazine is Peter Smolik doing a sequence, and Ed Templeton laid it out. It was a switch frontside 270 boardslide down a handrail in Beverly Hills, and it was Ed Templeton/Toy Machine layout style. Now I have a cover of a Toy Machine rider on TransWorld and I thought that was a weird coincidence. I told Ben Kelly that story and he wanted to do a little photo of the Strength cover and the Trapasso cover and put it in that issue, but we couldn’t find it on Google Images. Smolik’s trick was in the Shorty’s video and I’m in the background doing the Shake Junt, I was like 19 or 20 or something! It was so funny, I was shooting him on film.